


The Odd Bird

by StellaDraco



Series: Legacy of Apollo [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Awkwardness, Batarians, C-Sec, Crime Fighting, F/M, First Meetings, Genetically Engineered Beings, Gun Violence, Irony, Krogans, Mercenaries, Rescue, Strong Female Characters, Turians, krogan testicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 09:27:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaDraco/pseuds/StellaDraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set very early in Garrus' C-Sec days, he runs into a very strange woman when a job goes very badly.  </p>
<p>(As a note, this is first person but I may change the perspective in later chapters, or even switch between characters using section breaks?  Also, it's from Garrus' perspective.  And it may eventually get explicit in one way or another, but I really don't know?<br/>Also, as a side-note, the primary named krogan in this chapter is named an altered spelling of the German word for insane, I couldn't put that as a chapter note because I've had problems with those displaying on all chapters of a work if I put a note on the first chapter.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

How was it exactly that Chora’s Den _always_ reeked of death and sweat?  It smelled like perfume too, of course, but that didn’t help, it just covered the stink, mixed it with some kind of vaguely floral musk.  Not that I really expected the place to smell pleasant; it had a well-earned reputation as the shadiest bar in this arm of the wards.  

Which was, essentially, why I was here.  

Most business in Chora’s Den just got overlooked— not something I was happy about, but not something I could change.  The owner was probably paying someone off.  I was only here for information: a slave trader named Varukt had set up to meet a buyer.  The “merchandise” had probably been drugged and locked in a guarded container in some warehouse nearby.  Given Varukt’s reputation and the fact that his buyer was a batarian pimp from Omega, it seemed pretty likely that these slaves were women expected to become prostitutes if they weren’t already being used for that purpose.  Judging from the amount of guards, I guess these slavers considered them especially valuable.  

Aside from Varukt— a heavily armored krogan who surely had at least one concealed weapon— I spotted over a dozen men who looked like guards, several of them krogan.  Hopefully, this wouldn’t devolve into a gunfight right here, but at least I’d gotten a seat in a corner where walls and a few other tables made for easy cover.  

Oh, I fully intended to shut down this deal, I just wasn’t crazy enough to take on half a dozen krogan at once.  At least not right now, and not up close.  

The batarian was running late, and Varukt didn’t hide his impatience.  He was on his seventh drink since he’d arrived, which didn’t bode well for the batarian.  I didn’t know the buyer’s name, only his origin.  I’d dug up tons of  pseudonyms along with the evidence of his crimes, but no trace of his real name.  I’d have just had him arrested if it weren’t for the fact that he was our only lead beyond Varukt and this wasn’t the first trade they’d conducted.  We’d eliminated three middle-men already, one way or another, and C-Sec couldn’t determine whether Varukt was another or if he was in charge and had just decided to handle things himself.  I had to be sure the krogan wasn’t just a middle-man before I brought him in, although seeing how many men he’d brought here suggested that he was in charge.  Either that or this was a trap and he was going to— 

The batarian arrived.  He’d barely reached the table when the first burst of gunfire rent the air.  Well, so much for listening in, I’d bugged their table, but that was now irrelevant unless I wanted to deafen myself.  

Varukt shot the batarian point blank in the head using an automatic pistol he’d had stashed in his armor, but apparently the krogan wasn’t the only one who’d brought guards.  Half the bar still consisted of drunk civilians just starting to notice the corpse when most of the people I’d pegged as guards and a few I’d missed turned and fired on Varukt.  Admittedly, he was a krogan, but eight pistols and three surprisingly well-hidden assault rifles took quite a toll.  He dropped.  Nine more thoroughly disguised bodyguards rounded on the batarian’s entourage with answering gunfire and chaos erupted.  

Now the crowd of unarmed patrons fully realized the danger they were in.  Half of them bolted for the doors and an equal portion scrambled for cover, several diving quite spectacularly over the bar.  I backed up against the wall, silently grateful that a table had been overturned towards me in the panic.  The fairly basic investigation had just turned into a veritable war zone and I didn’t exactly have backup right now.  

On the plus side, nobody seemed to have noticed me.  I still had the element of surprise and might be able to keep that for a while depending on whether or not any of these men realized I was with C-Sec or, for that matter, whether or not they noticed if I started shooting at them.  The fight was pretty much twelve against twelve, with frantic civilians caught in the cross-fire and neither side having much strategy beyond “keep shooting.”  And my position, behind cover, was also behind the smaller of the two groups, mostly hidden by the door.  They might not be able to tell that my bullets weren’t enemy fire.  

I timed my shots to encourage this, picking off one man per shot.  Hopefully, if I kept firing in unison with the guards closest to me, I might be able to take out Varukt’s men before anyone realized I was here.  I had better odds against twelve of them rather than twenty-four.  

The side I was nominally helping weren’t faring too well on their own.  One of them managed to lethally headshot a krogan, but otherwise they weren’t doing any real damage, and two of them had been downed within ten minutes.  It was quickly obvious that these men, whether they were slavers themselves or just hired guards, had little to no combat experience and probably weren’t well-trained.  It wasn’t surprising; what I’d dug up on the batarian suggested he was as cheap as he was arrogant.  Apparently he’d worked as an assassin for a while and picked up enough skills that he’d expected he could handle Varukt on his own and only brought these men for show, or even as a distraction.  If the krogan hadn’t given him so little warning, this fight might have played out very differently.  

As it was, with their capable boss already dead, the batarian’s men were far outmatched by the dozen highly trained mercenaries, most of whom were krogans.  

My strategy worked, so far anyway, so neither group seemed aware that there was a third party in this gunfight, but with their own men so clearly outmatched, several of the batarian’s gunmen started edging towards the doors.  

That was when Varukt recovered.  You could never assume a krogan was dead, and this was why.  The bastard had healed, maybe even using medi-gel rather than just relying on his natural regeneration.  He pulled an assault rifle from what most people might have mistaken for a case meant to carry machine parts for sale.  Half the batarian mercenaries were dead in a second.  

In a glance, I suspected the rifle had prototype weapon mods which would probably be illegal once C-Sec heard about them, but that turned out to be a lucky break.  The gun jammed, a fact made obvious by the krogan swearing loudly and smacking it in frustration.  More than a little surprised they weren’t already dead, the batarian’s remaining men hesitated, giving one of the krogan’s a chance to kill another of their number.  Between that man’s skull exploding with the shot and Varukt’s simultaneous bellow and charge, I’m not really sure which attack drove the remaining men to bolt out the door and into the wards, but the krogan all followed immediately.  

The bar was in shambles; aside from the mercenaries, I could see six corpses plainly visible.  Someone was crying, probably a traumatized dancer.  The bartender nervously poked his head above the bar, the first person to actually notice me since the start of the fight.  I was undercover, but I guess, seeing an armed turian who hadn’t been a visible part of that fight, he assumed.  He yelled, asking why C-Sec hadn’t done anything to stop this and I ignored him, vaulting the low wall to the doors.  I needed to make sure this band of mercenaries didn’t kill anyone else.  

I thought back as I ran, mostly tracking them based on the occasional blood smears I hoped were evidence of one of the fleeing gunmen and not just a mugging.  A mugging wasn’t good either, obviously, but I think eight angry krogan posed more of a threat to public safety.  There were eight left, counting how many I’d watched die.  At least that was better than thirteen.  And here I’d thought this was going to be a day spent gathering information.  

That trail led, predictably, to the warehouses, and then it stopped.  The krogan must have been following it as well, which wasn’t surprising— as fast as they could charge, they were in heavy armor, chasing lightly armored men who’d all looked pretty fast.  Not to mention, the fleeing mercenaries were running for their lives and probably pretty scared having just seen their boss and comrades gunned down.  Fear made people fast.  

Knowing I followed a large group of armed men, I had to be careful rounding corners whatever the urgency, and it was lucky that I was: I found the krogan waiting in the second warehouse, clustered together and talking.  I only saw them around a stack of containers once I was barely ten feet away, so it wasn’t difficult to hear what they were saying.  I just hoped they didn’t turn back.  This warehouse happened to be neater than most, so between a wall and a stack of seven shuttle-sized crates, I couldn’t have found cover if I’d tried.  

“Spread out,” Varukt ordered, “you check that side and come around by the walls, meet me at the goods.  That’s what they’re looking for anyway, might’ve found it already.  Let’s hope Durga and that bitch are ready for them.  I’ll kill him if he left his post again.”  

The other krogan grunted assent and I heard them moving out.  They turned down a path to the right, leaving Varukt to walk forward alone.  The big krogan was nearly as arrogant as his buyer had been; he held his rifle at his side, aimed at the ground, while he jogged loudly.  He wasn’t looking anywhere but forward and hardly paused when other paths intersected his own.  That made him really easy to follow even without cover.  

Tailing the lone krogan through the warehouse might be the best opportunity I’d ever get to kill him, but without him I’d have no idea where they were keeping the slaves, or, for that matter, where everyone else involved was most likely headed.  I didn’t realize at the time that I’d severely underestimated the batarian’s forethought.  

Without warning, the lights shut off, plunging the warehouse into absolute darkness.  I froze, afraid I’d collide with Varukt if I kept running and not exactly eager to fight a krogan hand-to-hand.  Varukt, still oblivious to my presence, paused, bellowed in frustration, and then broke into a sprint.  Knowing what little I did of krogan, I imagined that he lowered his head, intending to ram anything in his way, whether it was an enemy mercenary, a crate, or one of his own men.  The cranes that moved the containers went silent until I briefly heard one start up somewhere high above me.  The reason baffled me until a resounding crash echoed through the dark.  

I could not have been more lucky to have stayed still.  Seconds after the krogan bolted, someone, apparently someone with sensors that made the lack-of-light irrelevant, used one of the warehouse’s cranes to topple a stack of containers onto Varukt.  I know krogan are durable, but I doubt even the toughest could have survived that.  I felt the impact well enough that I didn’t need to see it; the floor shook and a shockwave of putrid air washed over me.  I later discovered that that case had held an illegal shipment of krogan testicles.  I guess that was some kind of poetic justice.  

If somebody who could see in the dark had just dropped a crate on him, there was no reason to assume I wasn’t next.  I had a light on my rifle, but with the krogan mercs still around that didn’t seem like the best idea.  As far as I could tell, no one here had actively targeted me yet, so I figured I could get by with the night vision adaptation of my scope.  I still had to find the slaves and hopefully get them out of here, so I went to follow the krogan.  Hopefully he’d gotten close enough that I could find the crate if I just continued along this alley.  

Looking through the scope, it was obvious that the containers had been dropped from near the ceiling.  The metal sides had completely shattered and the warehouse’s metal floor became dangerously slippery under a mess of liquid, broken glass, and glistening blobs I didn’t want to identify.  Scrambling through them was a pain, especially with the scope, I just hoped that it wasn’t as loud as it seemed in the otherwise quiet warehouse.  

It turned out that the krogan had nearly reached the slaves when he met his end.  The boots of my armor, however well they gripped most floors, had next to no traction in this mess of krogan on metal, so I was just regaining stable footing when the click of a rifle confirmed I was not alone.  

Not even processing that talking might be an option, I raised my gun instinctively, leaving us staring each other down through the scopes of two nearly identical sniper rifles.  Looking back, it seems laughable that the two of us, both snipers, ended up facing each other from less than five meters apart, looking through our scopes because the darkness left us otherwise blinded.  That wasn’t my first reaction at the time.  

As much as the rifle was clearly high-quality, its wielder looked nothing like any mercenary I’d expected.  For one thing, it was a woman, and not a krogan but, even more surprisingly, a turian.  Looking through the scope, I didn’t have the best view of her, but from what I could see, she was far from ugly.  Many turian women had small crests or didn’t have them at all, and by that judgement she looked relatively masculine, but she had the bone structure of a model and the dark markings around her eyes made them almost seem to glow.  It seemed completely absurd to run into a woman this beautiful in the middle of a fight with slavers in a back-alley warehouse while I was still ankle-deep in krogan testicles.  At the very least, I highly doubted I was making a good first impression.  

Through the scope, I saw that this area had been fortified with smaller boxes lined up as a barricade in front of a large, closed container.  Probably Varukt’s shipment of slaves.  Now things seemed to make sense.  Varukt was selling prostitutes, and however much the bulge of her carapace around her neck might have resembled armor, this turian was just wearing street clothes.  Admittedly they were pretty unusual street clothes.  Aside from a pair of odd knitted gloves, she had her whole body (at least what I could see of her) shrouded in layers and layers of black leather.  I guess it was some sort of dress?  Maybe she’d been wearing it to cater to someone’s fetish, I figured she must be one of the slaves either way.  No other explanation made sense to me at the time.  

It took a while for me to wonder why she hadn’t shot me yet.  


	2. Chapter 2

“...Are you going to shoot?”  She didn’t lower her gun and her tone sounded understandably wary.  

“Are you?”

“I won’t shoot if you don’t.”

“Fair enough.”  Neither of us moved.  “I’d lower my rifle, except I can’t really see without it.”

“Yeah...”  She stepped back and edged towards the door of the slave container, opening it very slightly.  The reason she didn’t open it all the way was obvious: someone had a light on inside the container and even opening the door as much as she had gave us enough light to see by.  It also provoked a burst of distant shouting from somewhere to my right.  The woman nodded pointedly towards the door and I followed her inside.  

Inside, the container had more than enough room for the two of us along with its other occupants.  No less than fifteen young women, most of them human or batarian, huddled in the back of the container.  It looked like somebody had recently cleaned them up, probably the krogan trying to sell them, but their clothes were still tattered and filthy.  The turian with the rifle was the only one who looked anything less than terrified, and the contrast made her seem even more impressive.  I mean, I’d dealt with my fair share of tough women, but this one was less like the soldiers I had experience with and more like some kind of vid heroine.  The light of the small emergency lantern in the shipping container was blue-tinted and pretty dim, but it still gave a better view of the colors of her scales than my night-vision scope.  Common turian skin tones ranged from silver to dull reddish-brown, but this woman’s skin was a vibrant pale teal with striking markings in a wide range of blues and a brilliantly green facial tattoo in a pattern I’d never seen before.  The skin around her eyes wasn’t black, as I’d previously thought, it was a deep indigo that looked almost purple because of how brightly amber her irises gleamed.  She _had_ to be wearing make-up or something.  

I guess it showed that I was still basically a rookie when I just stared at her blankly for a few seconds.  

Still holding her rifle at the ready, the turian woman closed the container door and kicked at something under a sheet of plastic so she could stand as close to the door as possible.  I hadn’t noticed that before, but looking at it now I could see the unmistakable form of a dead krogan, probably one of the guards.  The slaves flinched when the turian kicked it, as if somehow that kick would reanimate the krogan.  I guess the other guard must have run off, unless...

I started wondering if I’d misjudged this turian.  She didn’t look like a soldier and she wasn’t wearing armor, but she held her weapon like she’d trained with it and her strategy seemed sound.  

She noticed I was staring at her and bristled, literally, in a way I hadn’t thought physically possible.  Her crest and the scales along her neck flared slightly upward.  “Is now really the time to be staring at me?  In all likelihood, we’ve got a few dozen krogan headed our way.  You’re C-Sec?  Here on your own?”

“Yeah.”  Another rookie move, I felt compelled to ask, “Are you a mercenary?”  I moved to flank the door with her, following her lead.  

She snorted.  “`Course.  Don’t tell me you thought I was a hooker.”  Catching sight of my sheepish expression, she bristled again.  “ _Of course_ you did.”

“Sorry.  It didn’t seem like a krogan would hire a turian mercenary and you aren’t wearing armor.  Why did you kill the other guard?”

“He made a pass at me.  And I get along pretty well with krogan, all things considered.  Besides, Varukt had enough trouble dealing with Durga’s sorry ass that he was only looking for female mercenaries and there aren’t a ton of us.”  I’d been half tempted to try and think of some way to ask her on a date, but now I reconsidered.  

Now I was getting used to her so she wasn’t quite as distracting.  She was a mercenary, though, possibly still working for Varukt, though he was now dead and she’d killed one of his men.  Or, considering she had sounded like she thought the krogan were going to be here to kill her, she could be a mercenary working with the batarian group, having taken a better offer.  That was the problem with mercenaries: no loyalty.  

“I’m Phoenix, by the way.”  Just when I thought we were going to end up fighting each other, she sounded almost friendly.  

“Garrus Vakarian.  Not that I want to fight a dozen krogan alone, but just whose side are you on?”

She shifted from foot to foot, not nervously, more like the way soldiers did after guarding the same place for a while.  I realized that her outfit didn’t have standard shoes: she had massive armored boots with curved blades arching up above the toes.  As much as the rest of her clothing looked civilian, those boots were clearly weaponized.  I wasn’t sure how she’d fight with them exactly, but the blades were high-quality steel and looked like they might have some kind of adaptation to puncture armor.  “I’m on whichever side keeps me alive.  Preferably without having to kill anyone who isn’t asking for it.”

Once again, I couldn’t hide my surprise.  “That’s not the outlook I expect from a mercenary.”

She sighed.  “I can fight.  I take these jobs to guard shipments or good people who got in over their heads.  Working with slavers isn’t my first choice, they’re just more desperate for mercs.”  

“You took this job because you’re desperate?”

She gestured bluntly to the slaves.  “I’m not chained to a wall.  Things could always be worse.”  

The door muffled a burst of automatic weapons-fire, as if countering her statement.  

“Right now I’m not so sure about that.”

“I can’t blame you.”  She kept watching the door, but her focused stare had relaxed to something that was almost a smile.  I tried not to get hopeful just so I could stay focused.  

Phoenix seemed to notice she was smiling and set her beak into a determined scowl.  “So, you know anything about what’s going on out there or did you just decide that wandering through warehouses seemed like a good way to kill time?”

I hesitated.  On one hand, that information was part of an ongoing investigation, but on the other we probably needed each other to make it out of here alive and even if we hadn’t, I couldn’t help but want her to like me.  “Varukt’s dead.  I guess he had another buyer in mind because he shot the batarian as soon as they met and now that man’s guards seem to be fighting with Varukt’s men.  At least, that’s my best guess.  You know of anyone else who’d cut the power to come after him?”  

“I know he wasn’t planning to sell these slaves for another day.”  She paused, listening as the gunfire outside continued over the occasional krogan yell.  “A lot of people wanted Varukt dead.  It could be any of them, but the batarian’s men seem most likely given the timing.  The only group that’s off the table is C-Sec unless you guys have really thrown the rules out the airlock.”  

She looked over at me as she said that, and I guess my frown surprised her.  “Look, if you have a problem with laws, you’re in the wrong job, I know that’s half of why I’m a freelance mercenary.  Hell, as it is that’s the main reason I don’t get much repeat business.”  She grinned and then winced.  

Phoenix spent no more than a second, standing very still, hunched forward, holding her breath, her brow set in a grimace, and then whatever it was passed and she stared at the door silently, pretending nothing had happened.  

“...are you alright?”  

“I’m fine,” Phoenix snapped, “just watch the door.  They’ll get to us sooner or later.”

As it happened, the answer was sooner.  

She’d barely said that when the gunfire outside went silent.  Apparently, whatever careful strategy the batarians had used, it hadn’t been enough because a particularly large krogan swung open the door.  

He had heavy armor and an assault rifle held in his free hand, but no helmet and he wasn’t quick enough to defend himself.  Ignoring her own gun, Phoenix slashed back-handed at the krogan using a long and wickedly curved knife I hadn’t seen her draw.  The krogan had clearly thought that, once everyone outside had been taken care of, he was in the clear, and he certainly hadn’t expected to find himself less than two feet from an armed opponent upon opening the door of the crate.  He had no time to do anything but stare in shock and horror as the ever-surprising woman swung a knife half the length of her arm backwards at his skull.  I thought she’d been aiming for his eye until the blade sunk deep into the skin just below his head plate and brutally tore it free.  Phoenix must have had detailed knowledge of krogan anatomy because her unconventional strike killed the krogan instantly.  

In the light of the tiny blue lantern, I watched six very startled krogan faces shift from calm to horror to rage in the space of a few seconds.  Phoenix whipped her rifle back up to fire, shooting the closest krogan in the arm as she yelled to me.  “What are you waiting for?  Put that gun to use, already!”  

I like to think I’d have made a better impression if I hadn’t been such a rookie.  Maybe I would have been a little less stunned by all the unprecedented situations I ran into that day.  At least I like to think that last fight with the krogan finally convinced her that I wasn’t normally so incompetent.  Aided by the fact that few of them had any cover or had even noticed me, my first clip took out four krogan with its five shots.  

In such close quarters with nothing between us and them, all the krogan predictably charged.  Unsurprisingly, Phoenix did the last thing I’d expect from any sane turian: she charged at them.  The closest krogan hit her the way pretty much nothing but a charging krogan does, and still more surprisingly, her own charge halted him.  I heard a crack, probably a mix of bones and armor breaking on both sides, and then I got to see what those bladed boots were for.  Fighting for and against krogan as a turian woman, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that Phoenix focused on the most brutal and intimidating methods she could manage.  She had to prove she was worth her pay as well as earn the respect of her comrades and enemies.  Ignoring the pain she had to be in from that impact, Phoenix jerked one leg up and kicked downwards in a clearly well-practiced motion.  The blades on the toes of her boot hooked through the krogan’s armor and dug inwards, stabbing in just below the rib cage and shredding downwards as she used her bodyweight to force that foot back to the floor.  Brutally disemboweled, no amount of regeneration could hope to save that krogan.  Unfortunately, the last one had ignored me and with one foot still tangled in her enemy’s corpse, Phoenix had no chance to defend herself.  

The last surviving krogan hit Phoenix like a speeding Mako and slammed her backwards into the wall of the slave container hard enough to bow the metal outward.  A section of the turian’s crest snapped off with the impact and the battered metal glistened blue where she’d hit.  Phoenix slumped, dazed but conscious.  I had another clip on me, but there was no time to reload and the krogan already had a hand on her face.  From the way he had grabbed her, it was obvious that he planned to wring her neck.  

The butt of my rifle snapped his head to the side and did some serious damage to his eye. The krogan swore and dropped her.  Going hand-to-hand with a krogan was never my first choice, but right now I had no alternative.  It was a good thing I’d dazed him.  He didn’t open that eye and I could see orange blood pouring through the tightly shut lid.  There was no way he wasn’t in agony and however much he regenerated, that had to distract him.  I used his blind side to my advantage and dodged more than I retaliated, hoping his pain and rage would cause him to make mistakes.  I didn’t realize how much they already had until he corrected his error.    

With a frustrated snarl and a lunge, he forced me to back up, leaving the container intentionally so the shadow he cast might make me harder to see.  I saw the gleam of light on metal before I realized that he was no longer just punching.  

His knife dug up beneath both the chest plate of my armor and my carapace.  It was more a lucky hit than a carefully targeted strike; I’d leaned back to dodge his other hand, which had swung towards my face, inadvertently opening a gap for his knife to slip through.  Feeling the blade stuck in me, the krogan sneered and drove it deeper, actually picking me up off the ground in the process.  

At the time I just felt disoriented, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked him for other weapons or even seen the knife coming.  What had he even hit?  He was too low for my heart at least, but he’d stabbed deep, and what little I could remember of my anatomy lessons just wasn’t coming to me right now.  Everything seemed sort of hazy and it hurt to breath.  I realized I was coughing blood when I saw it on the ground in front of me.  And then I realized I was on the ground.  I needed to put pressure on the wound, reminded some part of my mind that still remembered my training.  That was basic first aid.  But what about the krogan?  He’d dropped me.  He must have.  He must have let me go.  Why?  

Thinking really wasn’t happening right now.  I saw something steel and dripping orange dropped on the floor in my blood and then someone rolled me onto my back.  That face looked down on me, lopsided blue and teal and getting more blurry every second before the lights went on and I must have passed out.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter for this first part of the series is a very brief epilogue and then we'll be jumping ahead to the next section, which takes place many years later while Garrus is on Omega as Archangel. That said, that part is the main point of canon divergence, up until then, there's no real reason that something like this couldn't happen in the actual canon. To avoid having this explained in the summary of that part of the series, I just want to explain now: the primary point of canon divergence, aside from adding OCs and such, is that Shepard's resurrection by Cerberus/Project Lazarus does NOT coincide so perfectly with the point where Garrus is cornered as Archangel, meaning that Shepard would not arrive in time to rescue him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short epilogue.

The official report listed fifty-seven people killed and five wounded.  Of the dead, only ten had been civilians, as were three of the wounded.  The slaves were taken to a clinic where they’d be rehabilitated and helped back into society.  There was no record of Phoenix and I guess she must have fled, hopefully to find a better job than mercenary work, although I doubted that.  The C-Sec officers had me listed as dead for a while, I’d lost a lot of blood and without a body they figured I’d just been dragged to the incinerator, which had been activated shortly after the warehouse power was restored.  Durga’s corpse was never found and I later suspected that Phoenix had incinerated it to get rid of what little evidence suggested there’d been fighting before I arrived.  The slaves were all too traumatized to give credible testimony anyway.  

I guess it was lucky that my father had always been so thorough; unable to be certain of my death, he personally searched the wards where he found me unconscious in the med-clinic.  According to Doctor Michel, I’d been dragged by a turian with broken ribs and one side of her crest snapped off.  Phoenix refused any treatment until I was stable, at which point she grudgingly let the doctor set her ribs and use some medi-gel to heal her.  She refused to stay or give any information including either her name or mine.  Phoenix left the clinic and I heard absolutely nothing about her or anyone fitting her description since that day.  I downplayed her involvement in my report as well as my own relative incompetence, and officially all C-Sec has on the mercenary is Doctor Michel’s vague description of a turian missing part of her crest and wearing a black trenchcoat.  Without seeing it, I wouldn’t know what a trenchcoat was and there were a lot of us turians, so a few half-assed searches obviously went nowhere.  Most of C-Sec only remembers the incident for the jokes about krogan testicles or, in the case of my father, to beat me over the head with how I got distracted by a pretty face, but I like to think I remember it so vividly because of the point she made about C-Sec’s rules.  


End file.
